Smithsburg man sentenced to year in jail after admitting to sex act on job questionnaire

August 19, 2013|By DON AINES | dona@herald-mail.com

A man who admitted during an interview for a law-enforcement job that he had sex with an unconscious woman was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty Monday in Washington County Circuit Court to a third-degree sex offense.

Circuit Judge Donald E. Beachley sentenced Taylor Richard Metzger, 22, of Windy Haven Road, Smithsburg, to three years in state prison, suspending two years and ordering that the remaining year be served in the Washington County Detention Center.

On March 4, Metzger was being interviewed for a position with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police, according to the investigative report filed by that agency.

On a questionnaire, Metzger checked “yes” in answer to a question asking if he had ever committed a sexual act with “another person against their will or when the other person was unable to consent or resist due to a disabling condition such as intoxication,” the report said.

When questioned by the person conducting the interview, Metzger said the act happened at a party during the summer after his graduation from high school a few years earlier. Metzger told the interviewer that he was 18 at the time, and the girl was two or three years younger than him, the report said.

The case was turned over to Maryland State Police, and Metzger told the same story when he was interviewed a few days later at the Hagerstown barrack, the state police investigative report said.

On March 19, the victim, now an adult, was interviewed by telephone by state police. The woman told investigators “she vaguely remembers waking up sometime in the middle of the night and having the suspect in bed with her,” the report said.

However, the woman told police she had “no recollection of anything sexual happening with the suspect,” the report said.

Metzger was indicted by a Washington County grand jury in May, court records said.

A charge of second-degree rape was amended to the third-degree sex offense charge to which Metzger pleaded guilty, Assistant State’s Attorney Brett Wilson said after the plea hearing.

Two other second-degree sex offense charges were dismissed as part of the plea agreement, records said.